Joseph Morra Scholarship Fund

Joe Morra was the type of guy you wanted to have as a friend. He was kind, generous, compassionate and a joy. He was a deep thinker, and a lover of history, mythology, psychotherapy and neuroscience. He was brimming with talent; in addition to his intellectual pursuits, he was a tennis player, runner, skateboarder and snowboarder who earned his black belt in karate. And to think that wasn’t enough, Joe was also a phenomenal artist and musician who could make beauty in everything he touched.

Joe was our classmate, our friend and an integral member of our Upstate Medical University Class of 2019. Instead of becoming our future colleague in Psychiatry, Joe passed away on Monday, at the age of 25, a month short of our graduation. We are devastated. The world lost out when we lost Joe.

During his time at Upstate, Joe was a member of “Peds Pals,” a service group focused on mentoring and tutoring pediatric patients at the Upstate Cancer Center. He was also recently inducted into Gold Humanism Honor Society, a peer-elected honor going to students who embody humanism in medicine and go above and beyond to serve their patients and peers. Joe took this honor seriously and had been working on a year-long pilot wellness initiative to bring peer mentoring to third-year medical students.

While Joe is vivid in our minds, we grieve for his presence and mourn for those who will never experience his brilliant spirit. For this reason, we are raising money to establish a scholarship so we can support those who embody Joe. We remember Joe not only as a gifted medical student, and future psychiatrist, but as a renaissance man who could discuss the origin stories of Romulus and Remus, play niche music on his ukulele and turn notebook doodles into art. We hope that by establishing a scholarship in his name, we can promote the ideals that Joe lived and practiced. We will miss him forever. 

Thank you so much for your support.

Sincerely and with love,
Upstate Medical University Class of 2019


All money collected in this fundraiser will go directly to a scholarship fund in Joe's honor to be established by the Upstate Medical University Alumni Association, managed by Lori Murphy.  Please contact Lauren MacNeill ([email redacted]) with any questions.